IN THE ENEMY’S LAND
VENICE, _Oct._ 1911.
You will say perhaps I am reminded of the Bosphorus everywhere, just
as Maurice Barres is reminded of Lorraine in every land he visits.
Yet how would it be possible not to think of the Bosphorus in Venice,
especially when for so many years I have had to do without it? Here,
there is the same blue sky, the same blue carpet of sea, the same
sunset, and the same wonderful sunrise—only gondolas have taken the
place of caïques.
All day and part of the evening I allow myself to be rowed as my
gondolier wishes from canal to canal, and I am indignant I did not
know sooner there was a place in Europe where one could come to rest.
Why do the French and Swiss doctors not send their patients here? They
would be cured certainly of that disease from which everyone suffers
nowadays, the fatigue of the big towns.
But since so many illustrious poets have sung the praises of Venice
what is there for me to say? I prefer to glorify it as the Brahmins
worship their Deity, in silence.
The Venetians do not appreciate Venice any more than I appreciated
Constantinople when I lived there. They have no idea how lovely Venice
is, but prefer the Lido, where they meet the people of all nations,
whose buzzing in the daytime replaces the mosquitoes at night.
On our way here, the train went off the rails, so we had to alight for
some time: then one of the party suggested that we should visit Verona,
and I was very delighted at this happy idea.
It was midnight. We walked along the narrow streets of the deserted
city. The town was bathed in a curious, indescribable light, and it was
more beautiful than anything we could have seen in the daylight, when
perhaps the noise would have killed its charm. I hope that fate has not
decreed that my impression of that silent sleeping city shall ever be
destroyed.
I travelled to Venice in a compartment marked “Ladies only,” not
because I have any particular affection for those “harem” compartments,
but because there was not a seat for me with my friends. An old
English spinster was my companion. She welcomed me with a graciousness
that I did not appreciate, and at once began a very dull and
conventional conversation.
Presently, however, two Italian officers came in, and politely excusing
themselves in their language, sat down. They said they had been up
all night, had been standing from Milan, and had to go on duty when
they reached Venice, and begged the old lady politely to allow them a
quarter of an hour’s rest.
The spinster did not understand, so I translated.
“Disgraceful,” she said and ordered them out. But still the officers
remained. Then turning to me she said, “You who must be Italian, please
tell them what I think of them.”
I told her, “It was not my rôle to interpret such uncharitable
language.”
Then the officers turning to me, said in Italian, “Although English,
you are much kinder than your companion; please tell her we only want
to stop a quarter of an hour, and there is absolutely no danger for
her.”
Rising, the old spinster looked for the alarm signal, but finally
decided to call the guard, who ordered the officers out. Before they
went, however, they pulled out their watches and asked me to thank her
for her kind hospitality: they reminded me that they had what they
wanted, a quarter of an hour’s rest.
Luckily our arrival at Venice meant good-bye to this disagreeable
old creature, whose type flourishes all over the Continent, even in
Constantinople, and who sacrifices on the altar of respectability
everything, even charity.
* * * * *
Now I understand the enthusiasm of those who have spoken of Italy.
Nothing one can say is sufficient eulogy for this land of sunshine and
poetry and tradition.
I am told by the people of the north I shall be disappointed when I see
the south, but that does not disturb my impression of the moment. I am
worshipping Venice, and everything there pleases me.
[Illustration: A CAÏQUE ON THE BOSPHORUS]
[Illustration: TURKISH WOMEN IN THE COUNTRY]
To me it seems almost as if it were the home of the ancient Greeks,
with all their artistic instincts and roguery, all their faults, and
all their primitive charm. From my open window, which looks into a
canaletto, I heard the song of a gondolier. His voice was the sweetest
I have ever heard; no opera singer ever gave me greater pleasure.
Now that I know the number of his boat, I have engaged him as my
gondolier, and every evening after dinner, instead of wasting my time
at Bridge, I go on to the canal, leaving it to the discretion of my
guide where he takes me; and when he is tired of rowing, he brings me
back. All the time he sings and sings and I dream, and his beautiful
voice takes me far, far away—away from the unfriendly West.
Amongst its other attractions, Venice has an aristocracy. They are poor
certainly, but, with such blood in their veins, do they need riches?
And surely their charm and nobility are worth all the dollars put
together of the vulgar Transatlantics who have bought the big historic
palaces of Venice. I feel here as I felt in London, the delight of
being again in a Kingdom, and I can breathe and live. How restful it
is, after the nervous strain of the exaggerated Democracy of France.
* * * * *
BRUSSELS, _Nov._ 1911.
I have had this letter quite a fortnight in my trunk. I did not want to
send it to you. Somehow I felt ashamed to let you see how much I had
loved Italy—Turkey’s enemy.
I left Venice the day after the Declaration of War, if such a
disgraceful proceeding would be called a Declaration of War. For a long
time I could not make up my mind that that nation of gentlemen, that
nation of poetry and music and art, that nation whose characteristics
so appealed to my Oriental nature, that nation whom I thought so
civilised in the really good sense of the word, could be capable of
such injustice.
Even in the practice of “the rights of the strong” a little more
tact could have been exercised. Surely it is not permissible in the
twentieth century to act as savages did—at least those we thought
savages.
In a few years from now, we shall be able to see more clearly how the
Italian Government of 1911 was able to step forward and take advantage
of a Sister State, whose whole efforts were centred on regeneration,
and no one protested. What a wonderful account of the history of our
times!
When I think that it is in Christian Europe that such injustice passes
unheeded, and that Christian Europe dares to send us missionaries to
preach this gospel of Civilisation—I curse the Fate which has forced me
to accept the hospitality of the West.
* * * * *
PARIS, _Feb._ 1912.
Two chapters more seem necessary to my experience of the West. I submit
in silence. Kismet.
Hardly had I returned from Brussels than I became seriously ill. Do not
ask me what was the matter with me. Science has not yet found a name
for my suffering. I have consulted doctors, many doctors, and perhaps
for this reason I have no idea as to the nature of my illness. Each
doctor wanted to operate for something different, and only when I told
them I had not the money for an operation have they found that after
all it is not necessary. I think I have internal neuralgia, but modern
science calls it “appendicitis,” and will only treat me under that
fashionable name. At Smyrna, I remember having a similar attack. My
grandmother, terrified to see me suffering, ran in for a neighbour whom
she knew only by name. The neighbour came at once, said a few prayers
over me, passed her magic hands over my body, and in a short time I was
healed.
Here I might have knocked up all the inhabitants of Paris: not one
would have come to help me.
“The progress of modern science” was my last illusion. Why must I
have this final disappointment? Yet what does it matter? Every cloud
has a silver lining. And this final experience has brought me to the
decision, that I shall go back to Turkey as soon as I can walk. There
at least, unless my own people have been following in the footsteps
of modern civilisation, I shall be allowed to be ill at my leisure,
without the awful spectre hovering over me of a useless operation.
One night I was suffering so much that I thought it advisable to send
for the doctor. It was only two o’clock in the morning, but the message
the concierge sent back was, “that one risked being assassinated in
Paris at that hour,” and he refused to go.
The next day I had a letter from my landlord requesting me not to wake
the concierge up again at two o’clock in the morning. And this is the
country of liberty, the country where one is free to die, provided only
the concierge is not awakened at two o’clock in the morning.
This little incident seems insignificant in itself, but to me it will
be a very painful remembrance of one of the chief characteristics of
the people of this country—a total lack of hospitality.
If our Oriental countries must one day become like these countries
of the West, if they too must inherit all the vices, with which this
civilisation is riddled through and through, then let them perish now.
If civilisation does not teach each individual the great and supreme
quality of pity, then what use is it? What difference is there, please
tell me, between the citizens of Paris and the carnivorous inhabitants
of Darkest Africa? We Orientals imagine the word civilisation is a
synonym of many qualities, and I, like others, believed it. Is it
possible to be so primitive? Yet why should I be ashamed of believing
in the goodness of human beings? Why should I blame myself, because
these people have not come up to my expectations?
This musing reminds me of a story which our Koran Professor used to
tell us. “There was once,” he said, “in a country of Asia Minor, a
little girl who believed all she heard. One day she looked out of her
window, and saw a chain of mountains blue in the distance.
“‘Is that really their colour?’ she asked her comrades.
“‘Yes,’ they answered.
“And so delighted was she with this information that she started out to
get a nearer view of the blue mountains.
“Day after day she walked and walked, and at last got to the summit of
the blue mountains, only to find grass just as she would have found it
anywhere else. But she would not give up.
“‘Where are the blue mountains?’ she asked a shepherd, and he showed
another chain higher and farther away, and on and on she went until she
came to the mountains of Alti.
[Illustration: MELEK ON THE VERANDA AT FONTAINEBLEAU]
“All her existence she had the same hopes and the same illusions. Only
when she came to the evening of her life did she understand that it was
the distance that lent the mountains their hue—but it was too late to
go back, and she perished in the cold, biting snow.”
* * * * *
I do not know if there is another country in the world where
foreigners can be as badly treated as they are here; at any rate they
could not be treated worse. They are criticised, laughed at, envied,
and flattered, and they have the supreme privilege of paying for all
those people whose hobby is economy.
Everything is done here by paradox; the foreigner who has talent is
more admired than the Frenchman, yet if he does anything wrong, there
is no forgiveness for him.
An Englishwoman I knew quarrelled with a Frenchwoman, and the latter
reproached her with having accepted one luncheon and one dinner. The
Englishwoman (it sounds fearfully English, doesn’t it?) sent her
ex-hostess twelve francs, and the Frenchwoman not only accepted it but
sent a receipt. If I had not seen that receipt I don’t think I could
have believed the story!
Another lady, whose dressmaker claimed from her a sum she was not
entitled to, was told by that dressmaker, unless she were paid at once,
she would inform the concierge. Tell me, I beg of you, in what other
country would this have been possible? In what other country of the
world would self-respecting people pay any attention, far less go for
information, to the vulgar harpies who preside over the destinies of
the fifteen or twenty families who occupy a Paris house?
When I have been able to get my ideas and impressions a little into
focus, I intend to write for you, and for you only, what a woman
without any preparation for the battle of life, a foreigner, a woman
alone, and last but not least, a Turk, has had to suffer in Paris.
You who know what our life is in Turkey, and how we have been kept
in glass cases and wrapt in cotton wool, with no knowledge of the
meaning of life, will understand what the awful change means, and how
impossible for a Turkish woman is Western life.
Do you remember the year of my arrival? Do you remember how I wanted
to urge all my young friends away yonder to take their liberty as I
had taken mine, so that before they died they might have the doubtful
pleasure of knowing what it was to live?
Now, I hope if ever they come to Europe they will not come to Paris
except as tourists; that they will see the beautiful things there are
to be seen, the Provence with its fine cathedrals and its historic
surroundings; that they will amuse themselves taking motor-car trips
and comparing it with their excursions on a mule’s back in Asia; that
they will see the light of Paris, but never its shade; and that they
will return, as you have returned from Constantinople, with one regret,
that you couldn’t stay longer.
If only my experience could be of use to my compatriots who are longing
as I longed six years ago for the freedom of the West, I shall never
regret having suffered.—Your affectionate friend,
ZEYNEB.